Violent crime stayed essentially flat last year, according to statistics just released by the FBI. Those crimes were down by 0.2 percent last year, after a sharp increase of more than 5 percent the year before.

That means violent crime has essentially plateaued at a level higher than the record lows of a few years ago — but is still substantially lower than the high rates of the 1980s and 1990s.

Justice Department official John Gore must sit for questioning by attorneys for the lawsuits over the citizenship question his department requested to be added to the 2020 census, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.

A report on clerical sexual abuse in Germany released on Tuesday found thousands of cases of sexual abuse of minors by clerics in the Catholic Church between 1946 and 2014 – and warns that the actual number is surely higher.

The study looked at more than 38,000 sets of personnel records from the country's dioceses, as well as criminal records and interviews with those who say they were abused and clerics accused of abuse.

Updated at 5:20 p.m. ET

Twenty-seven years after testifying that then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her, Anita Hill says she believes the upcoming hearing on an alleged sexual assault by the current nominee "cannot be fair and thorough."

As it stands now, the hearing cannot provide the senators "with enough information to reach a reasonable conclusion," Hill tells NPR.

Proponents of Missouri’s photo-ID voter law argued Monday it’s not burdensome, while those suing to overturn it say it’s exclusionary.

House Bill 1631, which was passed in 2016 and took effect in June of last year, limits the types of photo ID that can be used for voting to non-expired Missouri driver’s licenses, a non-driving state-issued photo ID, a military ID, or a U.S. passport. It also took effect because 63 percent of Missouri voters passed Amendment 6 in November 2016, which allowed for a photo-ID requirement to be passed by the Legislature.

Even as he was making plans to rent a Taipei apartment last week, it appears that Cody Wilson had already severed all ties with the controversial 3D gun printing company he founded in 2012.

In June, M., a 28-year-old woman jumped from the second floor of her home in Madurai, India — 20 feet above a rocky, tar road — after a bitter argument with her husband. He had accused her of having an affair.